Eugene Burdick

Eugene Leonard Burdick was an American political scientist, novelist and non-fiction writer. He was co-author of The Ugly American, published in 1958, and of the nuclear-war novel Fail-Safe, published in 1962, and author of The 480, published in 1965. He died in 1965, the year that last novel appeared. He was born in Sheldon, Iowa, and named for Eugene V. Debs by his socialist father. He studied psychology at Stanford, served in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946 as a lieutenant commander, and received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.